OK, here’s the plan: We hit the buffet downstairs as soon as it opens. On the road by 8 AM as soon as the PPI numbers cross…or maybe before.
Elaine’s probably going to watch me eat because we went out to a really nice place last night, but as is the fashion among chefs, her lightly seasoned chicken breast had so much garlic on it that she was beginning to mumble phrases is Italian.
That was around 5 PM. I had a fair piece of prime rib, but there was so much fat untrimmed that I figure out of a 16 ounce cut, I really netted (after table surgery) about 9 ounces which is my red meat quota for the year. I’ve backlogged all the way into 2017 already.
We ended up hitting the rack about 6 PM. but by 7, Elaine had snuck down to the hotel restaurant for a club sandwich and fries….so she’s planning on that for breakfast.
In fairness to the Washington Cartel, it does appear there has been something of an economic recovery in northwest Texas. For one thing, we only counted 8 police cars along 287 from Fort Worth to Amarillo. About half of what was expected.
This is likely the result of there not being that much crime that can be committed. Study the photo to the right…now, what kind of crime comes to mind (other than tax and land scams, which the government already owns.)
There’s been a real upturn since our last eyes-on adventure up here. Looks like Cotton is becoming a favored crop, and that led to a discussion of globalism.
How crazy is an economic system when it makes sense to plant cotton in Texas, harvest and ship in bales or whatever to Asia where shirts are made, and then bring them back here for sale?
Surely, there have to be some enterprising young minds in this former nation (which we used to be when we had borders) who can invent the necessary robotics to screw those other countries out of the jobs they stole from us in the first place?
Not all the local ag activity is in cotton, of course. There seems to be some peanut farming and a couple of other crops. Most of the field equipment looked newer, so looks to me like equipment dealers may be high rollers this year.
The downside? Well, the drought is still very much a topic and as we crossed over the Red River on 287 there was no water to be seen, according to Elaine. I was distracted with a semi to deal with.
You know, it’s really remarkable how orderly traffic is on the major freeways. I don’t think there was more than three cars passed us all day and that was with the snooze control set on the posted speed limit, 75. A lot of the truckers were only doing 70 – likely because of the big fuel savings.
The rest of the trip was uneventful, highlighted, I suppose by the discussion of how we’ve going to spend our $144 million that we’re just sure to win in the Mega Millions Lottery that I bought a couple of tickets for.
Elaine thinks that any largess from us upon winning should be divided up among kids based on birthright. In other words, between us we’ve got 9 kids and so she’d opt to take the kid’s money pool and simply cut it 9 ways. I proposed a couple of other approaches, but we have plenty of time until the drawing to work out the fine points.
A good 30 miles, though, was devoted to explaining how after we have just freshly paid millions worth of income tax, the government will turn around and hit the kids with serious gift taxes, since that’s a taxable event in IRS’s view.
“Wait…it’s OUR money at that point! We will have just paid huge taxes on it!” she protested. “””What gives them the right to tell us what we can an d cannot do with it?”
“The Army. the Navy, and the Homeland Security, folks, dear.”
That tuned me up for one of my MBA-like discussion of structuring taxable events. “We could put then each down as 3 or 4% owners of the original ticket,” I suggested.
And that led to another hundred miles, or so, of intricate details of how to firewall the ticket ownership and tax allocation issues. Not that any of our kids would come back and say “No, I am actually a 10% party” and, since we don’t have pre-ticket documentation of their partial ownership…so we’d have to paper that over before showing up in Austin for the loot….
Google says it’s only 7 hours and 25-minutes up to Fort Collins. With the time zone change, we ought to be through Denver about 2 PM…and by then I should b e about finished defending my doctoral thesis to Elaine about how it’s not really double-taxation because effective control changes between parties.
This could be a long day.
We still have time before the drawing to work this out, but being rich may be more of a pain than I first thought. After all this planning, if we don’t hit it big on this one, we won’t be buying another lotto ticket.
For at least a week or so.
Lost in Space Dept.
A number of items to go over this morning:
One is the UFO flap down in the Houston area. Discussion and pictures over here=.
But just like my luck with the lottery, wouldn’t that beat all: Live in the Outback forever, leave on a working vacation and that’s when the aliens show up?
Another good one is the report over here that the Rosetta images from comet 67P have been doctored. Watch the video for how this was figured.
Research Help Needed
This is a weird one, but I woke up in the middle of the night wondering where I had seen a report that humans experience reality with a time delay of several seconds.
If you remember seeing that (or have a source) please send it along…still working on Ure’s Grand Unified Theory of Everything. UGUTE for short.
Would this make a fine Stephen King plot?
Couple goes into a hotel, goes to bed and has dreams….left behind pieces of dreams not completed by previous travelers who stayed in the room?
And that gets us to…
Futuring
Chris McCleary has another update on how *(very) well Project August dreams came in. Not that it’s unexpected…
Now to just figure out some method to take the DreamBase data, toss in some of Grady’s real-time work of the www.nostracodeus.com work and then get down to where we can accurately forecast….uh…lotto numbers…
OK, on to the hard news of the day…after a run through the buffet downstairs. One of the joys of travel is reading local newspapers…
Write when you break-even
George george@ure.net